The voice of Siri: US woman unmasks herself as iPhone 'assistant'

Hello Siri, who are you? The voice-activated "personal assistant" on
Apple's iPhone, a cultural phenomenon of the cyber era famous for her useful
and not-so-useful responses to requests for information, continues to
decline to answer that question to American callers.

Susan Bennett, the woman behind the voice of Siri in the USPhoto: CNN

By Philip Sherwell, New York

6:41PM BST 04 Oct 2013

But a voice-over actor from suburban Atlanta has now come forward to identify herself as the sound of Siri in the US.

With Apple introducing variations on the classic Siri and growing Internet speculation about her identity, Susan Bennett broke cover as the original voice of the ground-breaking technology after another actor was wrongly named.

"It seemed like everyone was clamouring to find out who the real voice behind Siri is, and so I thought, well, you know, what the heck? This is the time," she told CNN.

Apple, which is renowned for its commercial secrecy, has not confirmed her name. But audio experts and industry professionals said that they were "100 per cent" certain that Siri is indeed Ms Bennett, who has also given voice to airline announcements and GPS directions and recorded countless commercials.

The phone application gives users personalised answers to questions about everything from history to restaurants as software draws information from many sources.

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For Miss Bennett, the painstaking process that began in 2005, long before anyone had heard of the iPhone, when she was approached by an automated voice technology company.

For spent four hours a day, every day, in her home recording booth reading and recording nonsensical phrases and sentences from which the experts separated out her vowels, consonants, syllables and diphthongs, and adapted her pitch and speed.

In a process called concatenation, these snippets were used to build the words and sentences with which Siri answers questions.

Miss Bennett also revealed why some of Siri's responses sometimes seem to be delivered with a slightly exasperated or sardonic air.

"There are some people that just can read hour upon hour upon hour, and it's not a problem, " she said. "For me, I get extremely bored ... So I just take breaks. That's one of the reasons why Siri might sometimes sound like she has a bit of an attitude. Those sounds might have been recorded the last 15 minutes of those four hours."

Ms Bennett did not know how the recordings would be used and took on a series of other commitments over the next six years. Then, after Apple released the iPhone 4S, the model with which Siri made her debut in 2011, a colleague called her and asked if it was her voice.

She did not have the new device but went online and listened to video clips. The voice was indisputably hers, she said.

The name Siri is Norwegian, meaning "beautiful woman who leads you to victory", and comes from the intended name for the original developer's first child

Ms Bennett made her start in her niche business 40 years ago as the voice in commercials of First National Bank's "Tillie the All-Time Teller", the first ATM machine.

"I began my career as a machine many years ago," she noted. "I'm sure that you hear my voice at some point every day."

And she told CNN that she thinks that one day, every one could be their own Siri."I really see a time when you'll probably be able to put your own voice on your phone and have your own voice talk back to you," she said. "Which I'm used to, but maybe you aren't."